Learning. Happens. Here.

Digital Citizenship

We’ve discovered that the mix of the digital divide, possible turbulent home lives, and general teenage forgetfulness can result in a loss of power. So, for vaious reasons it seems that some of my students who DO have devices (yes, there are still a lot who do NOT) show up to school with a low or no charge. Yes, they sometimes admit that they fall asleep with their phone next to them and not plugged in. Shocker.

A device that they LOVE to use for social connections and fun in the hallways and during free time. Oh yeah, and sometimes in class for learning, too! Without that device they feel a serious gap in their daily lives.

We Fill That Gap!

We want the kids to feel like the Library Media Center – Learning Commons and Makerspace Station – is a safe place to land and the place to go when they need things. Like finishing and priting out homework, relaxing and making something at our Makerspace Station, practicing mindfulness with our Coloring Zen area, or borrowing a charger to power up their devices. This is our third try with this concept, the first two were failures – if you interested you can read about this journey going back four years on my professional blog. So far, this is going GREAT!

Backstory: A few years ago, I was inspiredby the charging lockers I saw during a visit to theHillwood High School Library in Nashvillewith the ISTE Board of Directors and I wanted to support our BYOD pilot program and our kiddos by giving them a place to recharge their devices in school.

And of course that place was going to be our school Library Media Center — shameless how we will do just about ANYthing to get kiddos to visit our Library!

Because I think we’ve now hit on a really easy, relatively low cost, & popular way to give my kids the power they crave and need.

Approximate cost for 8 chargers & 10 cords = $130 bucks

Piece of mind not worrying that kiddos will have their devices stolen or locked out on your watch?

Priceless!

Procedure:

• Kids (and staff) can request a charging device, first come, first serve anytime before 2pm. I also bought 2 flat chargers for staff to borrow. Kids come first. Always.

• We keep the chargers tucked away on a shelf behind the Circulation Desk.

• Kids must first show that their phone has less than 30% charge to get one. (We found at first some kids just wanted it for the cool factor – which was cool, but not cool for the kids who really NEEDED them!)

• We don’t lend them out for the charging of fancy headphones – these are for devices that could possibly be used in the classroom.

• Kids can borrow the charger alone or with a multi-device cord. They must initial to agree to pay for the loss or damage of the device & cord (Yeah, we know this isn’t really enforceable)

•We ask that kids agree not to let the device out of their sight – if they’re asked to share it – we trust them to keep track of it.

•We also ask that kids bring back the device at the end of the day. Do they always remember? Nope! That’s why we collect their last period class teacher (I, or my amazing Media assistant Kathi Bell, calls classrooms at the end of the day to get them back – or we track them down the first period of the next day.

Yeah, We’re Popular!

Some days we’re cleaned out of chargers within the first 5 minutes of school. I’m making a sign for our front door that says “Yes, We Have Awesome Chargers to Borrow!” or “Sorry, All Chargers Have Been Borrowed” withBitmoji cartoons.

• This is a complimentary service. We also reserve the right to not lend out a charger on an early dismissal day, after 1:30pm, or to a kiddo who has proven to be unreliable with the charger in the past. But that hasn’t happened yet. Frankly, I doubt it ever will. Don’t tell my students, for all my fierceness [snaps Z formation] I’m kind of a soft touch. But I gotta keep that leverage because we want to keep these chargers nice for everyone. So far though, the kids have been super fantastic and very enthusiastic about this new FREE perk we’re providing to them!

GOAL #1 MHMS provides a safe and nurturing school environment that respects our diversity and commonality.

Why do we do this?

You never know what kinds of things kids are struggling with at home. What if a kid doesn’t have a computer at home and just a mobile device and needs to do homework? This is important! We can help fill the gaps that the world & circumstance gives to these kiddos.

My kids tell me you can get these chargers at Five Below. I haven’t tried them yet. If we lose a lot over the year, I might give them a whirl. The multi device cords are CHEAP! Meaning, inexpensive to pick up (via Amazon) but they can sometimes stop working and can break. So far, so good, though and this has been a LOT less of a headache than those fancy expensive charging lockers.

This great idea was inspired by the amazing Teacher Librarian at Wilde Lake Middle School – Sarah Russo!

I should have started with that! [smacks forehead] but I wanted to give how we run this first.

Are you a Teacher Librarian, or educator and want to hear what problems we encountered with our previous attempts at charging stations and charging lockers?

Because, NO ONE wants to be responsible for a kids only device but it’s AWESOME to be responsible to give POWER to a kid and their beloved device!

Your turn!

What am I missing here? Any other suggestions? Successes? Do you like that we help out the kiddos? What other things could we add to our School Library to make it a more appealing place (Other than a Keurig -that would be boss!) Please hit me up in the comments and share your thoughts! Thank you for reading!

Buying information. If you want to get one of these for yourself or for your kiddo, check Amazon! So far, they’ve been great & I did have 2 die on my (after being used by kids…a LOT) but the company is sending me 2 replacements! I couldn’t ask for better customer service than that!

I’ve been teaching long enough to remember when kiddos were NOT allowed to bring a cell phone to school…at all. They were contraband! Then Columbine and 9/11 happened, and parents wanted and needed to make sure their kiddos were OK.

So Howard County Schools were one of the FIRST school districts in our state to create a policy where kids could keep their cell phones – turned OFF and stored in lockers. These phones would be available in an emergency and could only turned back on as they left the school. That was huge!

Fast forward about 13 years….yes, that policy above lasted thirteen years, from a cellasaurus to the smart phone. But then…

an amazing AWESOME thing happened, we evolved! Now, we are one of the only schools in our state to have a new, more liberal, cell phone & communication policy! About two years ago HCPSS decided to relax our policy and to baby step it towards BYOD. And boy, was I on board with this! Wooo hooo!

Our new policy allows our students to use their cell phones in the mornings, during hallway transitions, and at recess. More details can be found below but we here at MHMS want to come to the kiddos from a standpoint of…

WE TRUST YOU!

We trust you to make good choices. We trust you to follow basic guidelines, good manners, and common sense. We trust you to be an ethical member of our community and to choose civility.

Next, I am hoping, we will allow students to use their Cell Phones as connected tools in their classes (and in the library) for academic reasons! I Can’t wait for that day and my students are ready for it!

I’m so fortunate, that my awesome principal, Mr. Wasilewski, has given me permission to pilot test cell phones used collaboratively in Media center for lessons such as my Media Orientation using the AWESOME Kahoot quiz feature! With admin permission, we’ve also used mobile devices in the Media Center for digital discoveries & QR Code Scavenger Hunts!

We have some great education partners and friends at the website Flocabulary and we love what they’ve been creating lately with super engaging rap songs & videos tied in with the CCSS! (Common Core State Standards) We’ve been using their Week in Rap news feature in our school since they landed on the hip hop education or #HipHopEd scene in 2008! Murray Hill even earned a video shout out last year! W00t! (We were SO proud!)

I’ve been on Twitter now (professionally – not personally) for 6 years, and I have an AMAZING & generous personal learning network of followers – so being careful, upbeat, positive and mindful of what I Tweet is important to me, too! I don’t use Facebook – we just never got along. We have been loving us some Vine Video in our school, since we experimented and createdvideo book trailers last year (see our previous post) – so it’s not about what kind of social media you use but HOW you use it! I think you’ll like the video – let me know in the comments!

We all want our kiddos to make good choices online! We’ve already shared this video on our daily MHTV Live! News show – we just wanted to share it with you!